Published by CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.Edited by Frances Richard. Foreword and Introduction by Anthony Huberman. Text by Lynne Tillman, et al.

The CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco dedicates year long seasons of discussions and public events to a single artist. In 2014–15, Joan Jonas (born 1936) was “on our mind.” This book brings together essays from writers, curators, art historians and artists that focus on a single work, from Jonas’ earliest films through her installation for the US Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. The book also contains excerpts from readings and public lectures, and images by some of the other artists whose work was evoked in public and private conversation. Contributors include Jacqueline Francis, Renée Green, Quinn Latimer, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Patricia Maloney, Elizabeth Mangini, Judith Rodenbeck and Lynne Tillman.

They Come to Us without a Word documents Joan Jonas' (born 1936) project for the US Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale, an installation that incorporates multiple components, including projected videos (with music by Jason Moran), drawings and photographs. Each section of the pavilion represents a particular creature (bees, fish) or natural condition. Recited fragments of ghost stories sourced from the oral tradition of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, form a continuous narrative linking one room to the next. Designed with Jonas' close collaboration, this book features an extensive collection of images selected by the artist, including stills, drawings and photographs. Also included is a major new text by Jonas herself, as well as significant texts from Ann Reynolds and Marina Warner, and an interview with the artist by Ingrid Schaffner.

One of the most continuously influential figures of the past half century, Joan Jonas was among the first artists to embrace the forms of video, performance and installation. From her beginnings as a sculptor, and her emergence in the New York art and performance scenes of the 1960s and 70s (including the seminal "Vertical Roll" video piece of 1972, in which the titular television malfunction enacted a memorably fractured female identity), up through her six appearances at Documenta and her performance at the Performa 13 biennial, her work has always been surprising, groundbreaking and necessary. This extensively illustrated volume, containing hundreds of full-color photographs, drawings, scripts and diagrams, presents the definitive collection of Jonas' work. The first and authoritative career-spanning monograph of the multimedia pioneer, it covers more than 40 years of performances, films, videos, installations, texts and video sculptures. Art writer Joan Simon has painstakingly researched every one of Jonas' works and includes notes on each piece, along with new and never-before-published writings by the artist that provide extensive background. In the Shadow a Shadow also contains essays by Douglas Crimp, Barbara Clausen and Johanna Burton, and unpublished photographs and drawings from Jonas' archives. With a detailed production and exhibition history of the video and performance works, as well as the first comprehensive bibliography and biography of the artist, this intensively researched and authoritative book documents the range, breadth and depth of one of the most prolifically original artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.New York–born and based, Joan Jonas (born 1936) has taught at UCLA School of the Arts, in Stuttgart, Germany and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is a professor emerita. She has lived and worked in Greece, Morocco, India, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Poland, Japan, Italy, Hungary and Ireland.

Born in New York in 1936, Joan Jonas has been a towering figure in postwar Conceptual and experimental Performance art since the 1960s, when she began her pioneering exploration of gender and identity through a combination of myth, choreography and new media. In 2007, she was a visiting professor at the world-famous Ratti Foundation in Como, Italy. While there, she turned to a text by art historian Aby Warburg (whose writings on Hopi imagery and ritual inspired Jonas’ 2005 performance “The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things”) to create “The Hand Reverts to Its Own Movement…,” a solo performance centered on the act of drawing. This substantial new monograph spans 40 years of the artist’s groundbreaking output and introduces her new performance on the occasion of its world premiere in Como.

Published by Queens Museum of Art.Edited by Valerie Smith and Warren Niesluchowski. Foreword by Tom Finkelpearl.

Five Works presents a much broader look at the American artist's oeuvre than its name suggests. This first major exhibition of Jonas's work in a New York museum includes a selection of the artist's works in installation and video, drawings, photographs and sketchbooks. Curated by Valerie Smith, QMA Director of Exhibitions, the show brings together five key works (aha!) from Jonas's career including Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy, Organic Honey: Vertical Roll (1972-1994), The Juniper Tree (1976-1978), Volcano Saga (1985-1994), Revolted by the Thought of Known Places... (1992-2003), and Lines in the Sand (2002) . Also included are her portable My New Theater series (1997-1999), drawings and sketches. All of the works in the exhibition are presented in color and this catalogue which also includes an interview with Jonas and poet/scholars Susan Howe and Jeanne Heuving.

Performances Film Installations 1968-2000

Artist Joan Jonas is one of the most groundbreaking pioneers in the fields of video and performance, having worked in these media since the 1960s. This catalogue documents her work with an interview, numerous performance and film stills, installation drawings and photographs, many of them published here for the first time.